Law and Custom in the Steppe: The Kazakhs of the Middle Horde and Russian Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century

Offers a reconstruction of the social, cultural and legal history of the Middle Horde Kazakh steppe in the 19th century using largely untapped archival records from Kazakhstan and Russia and contemporary reports. It explores the cross-cultural encounter of laws, customs and judicial practices in the process of Russian empire-building at the local level.